The thriving city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has recently been
pitchforked into unjust notoriety by certain irresponsible
correspondents of certain sensational and habitually inveracious
newspapers that infest New York and Chicago. It has been represented
as having an easy divorce mill that constantly grinds out divorces of
a more or less bogus nature. This is fundamentally false. The laws of
South Dakota are liberal, but they are strictly interpreted. These
unscrupulous newspapers, whom it is unnecessary to name, have gone
still further in their distortion of truth, dissemination of error and
attempted degradation of the high and noble calling of journalism.
They have made false and unwarranted statements about the laws of the
Dakotas and of the United States generally on the subject of divorce.
Nor is this all in their race for a temporary and unsubstantial
circulation,--they have maligned certain unfortunate and meritorious
women and men, and added insult to injury by publishing bogus
portraits of beautiful ladies whose misfortunes should have provoked
respectful sympathy rather than coarse insinuation and vulgar
ridicule. Because these women were prominent in what has been termed
the Divorce Colony of Sioux Falls, either from social rank in their
former spheres, or by reason of the legal peculiarities enmeshing
their cases, they are legitimate subjects for honest journalistic
treatment, and some of them, triumphing over the natural shrinkingness
of their sex, for the sake of truth and for the sake of other women
who may need examples and incitements to achieve freedom from
dishonoring marriages, are perfectly willing to sacrifice their own
personal desires for obscurity and have their lives and their cases
properly presented. I have even prevailed on a few to permit the use
of their photographs to add to the personal interest of this article.
[Illustration: EVA LYNCH-BLOSSE.]
[Illustration: MRS. J. G. BLAINE, JR.]
[Illustration: MRS. MINA HUBBARD.]
[Illustration: DR. THOMAS D. WORRALL.]
The case of greatest interest, perhaps, because it has a transatlantic
notoriety, is that of Eva Lylyan Lynch-Blosse, an English lady, who
came to Sioux Falls early last winter and attracted almost instantly
the respectful attention of the citizens. Not because she was a
strikingly beautiful woman, for a student of statues might find some
faults in her features, but because out of the shy, violet eyes a
high, indomitable spirit occasionally gleamed and a stray flash from
them, combined with her radiant freshness of complexion and perfect
grace of figure and of carriage, would light up the common sordid
streets of the common masculine mind and turn them, for the nonce,
into vistas of imagination.
Some persons, passing us, inspire the thought: There goes a being with
a strange life-history, or full of great capacities, moral or mental.
Such was, undoubtedly, the chief component of her charm, felt equally
by the grave and learned lawyer, ex-Judge Garland, who conducted her
case, and by the street-loungers who respectfully hastened to make way
for her passage. It was the high character that radiated from her,
scorning the conventionalities that conspire to belittle her sex,
determined to be free and not afraid of being a pioneer in baffling
the barbarism of her native laws. A singular story hers, that demands
to be told in full, since it is full of inspiration to oppressed
womanhood everywhere.
The daughter of an English clergyman, she married at seventeen Lieut.
Edward Falconer Lynch-Blosse, an Irishman of good family, but bad
habits. In a few months this girl-wife discovered not only that she
had mistaken for affection what was merely the gratified vanity of a
boarding-school miss when wooed by a good-looking uniform, but that
there was absolutely nothing in the nature of the animated uniform on
which even respect could be built. Active brutality was soon begun by
the lieutenant. Simple adultery not being a sufficient amusement for
his hours of ease, he tried to compel his refined and delicate wife to
receive his paid paramours as her associates; and on her demurring, he
became mad with indignation and proceeded to discipline her, according
to the Englishman's time-honored right of violence. As a minor but
very embarrassing matter to a sensitive woman, he plunged into debt
and forced her to contend with and pacify his duns out of her private
fortune, and even worried her into an attempt to raise money for him
by pledging her annuity, though, luckily, no Jew in London was plucky
enough to take a long risk on the life of the wife of so brutal a
husband. This daily inferno of disgust and terror the woman endured
for three years, for the barbarous English law requires the woman, not
the man, to prove extreme cruelty besides adultery; and cruelty is
often not so easy to prove, for Englishmen, as a rule, do not beat
their wives on the housetops. It is generally a strictly boudoir
performance, with locked doors and the rabble excluded, as befits the
solemnity of such a marital right. At last, owing to the lieutenant's
culpable carelessness in castigation, she was able to go to court with
plenty of provable cruelty. But here again the barbarous English law
stepped in and said: "This is all very true, but wait a bit. You shall
have a decree _nisi_," which meant that she must wait six months and
then a certain musty, overpaid, and underworked humbug, styled the
Queen's Proctor, after hobnobbing with an attorney-general, would, if
his dinner agreed with him, confirm the decree and make it final.
During this suspense the ineffably mean uniform that had been
masquerading as a man was visited by an idea, and wrote a letter to
Mrs. Lynch-Blosse depicting himself as on the brink of starvation and
consumption, and begging for some money. The woman's pity was aroused.
She had once fancied for a brief while, with the undeveloped heart of
girlhood, that she liked this empty, tinkling symbol of a man. She
wrote him a kind letter enclosing the money. It takes but little
imagination to understand what such a creature would do with the cash;
that he would hasten to celebrate the success of his cunning by a
revel at which he could brag to some loose companion how neatly he had
cheated a generous and noble woman. But he did something more, almost
inconceivable in its baseness; he took that letter to the Queen's
Proctor and showed it to that archive of centuried insapience as a
proof that there had been collusion in the case, that his wife and he
were really on good terms, and that he was anxious to regain her. The
Proctor took his word, and without going into the case further, when
the six months were up, refused to confirm the decree. And then her
friends said: "You had better give up. England has decided that you
cannot be free." And her lawyers said: "Even with fresh evidence it
would be foolish to re-open the fight. The action of the Queen's
Proctor is so insurmountable." But the woman said to herself: "Though
England has decided that I must be a slave, nevertheless I will be
free." Meantime Lieutenant Lynch-Blosse, after endeavoring to blacken
his wife's character in his regiment, and getting soundly thrashed for
his pains, eloped with a light-headed Scotch peeress whose husband,
Lord Torphichen, promptly obtained a divorce, with the custody of his
children, and the elopers fled the kingdom, leaving a small army of
swindled tradesmen who are still exceedingly anxious to discover their
whereabouts. When last heard of, the ex-uniform was living in Chicago
under an _alias_, and he will probably remain one of the many English
ornaments of this country, for the same English law that permits a man
to castigate his wife in moderation is excessively severe if he
swindles tradesmen.
Mrs. Lynch-Blosse obtained her Dakotan divorce on the ground of
adultery, the evidence being the record of the Scotch suit of Lord
Torphichen against Lady Torphichen, otherwise styled the Right Hon.
Ellen Frances Gordon, and apart from the wrongs, the beauty, and the
pioneer courage of Mrs. Lynch-Blosse, picturesque as they made it, her
case possesses profound interest to the legal mind. It adds to the
weight of such cases as except to the old rule of domicile (Ditson
_v._ Ditson, 4 R. I., 87; Harding _v._ Alden, 9 Mo. 140; Hollister
_v._ Hollister, 6 Pa. St., 449; Derby _v._ Derby, 14 Ill. App., 645)
by showing that where a husband is guilty of such conduct as would
entitle even to a limited divorce, the wife is at liberty to establish
a separate jurisdictional domicile. Moreover, Mrs. Lynch-Blosse might
have obtained a divorce on grounds less strong than she did, for a
divorce good at the place of domicile will be sustained in England,
though the same grounds would have been insufficient to obtain it
there. (Harvey _v._ Farnie, L. R. 8 App. Cas. 43; Turner _v._
Thompson, L. R., 13 P. D. 37.) Of this law, probably, comity of
nations is the chief component. Those who admire moral courage and
feel a glow of indignation at the fact that, in order to secure her
natural right to own herself, a woman in the closing years of the
nineteenth century has to spend thousands of dollars, travel thousands
of miles, and sojourn among strangers, may be glad to know that since
her freedom she has married an English gentleman of high character,
and is living restfully in a charming little cottage on the banks of
what Macaulay calls, in his picturesque way, "the river of the ten
thousand masts." The great, feverous heart of London throbs near.
Another very interesting personage in the Sioux Falls Divorce Colony,
is Mrs. James G. Blaine, Jr., now living in a cosy cottage on the
fashionable avenue with her sister, Miss Nevins, her son, James G.
Blaine, 3d, and her maids. When Marie Nevins, piquantly pretty, witty,
and accomplished, made a stolen match with the ungreat son of one of
America's greatest political figures, she little dreamed what the
hands of the Fates--who are sometimes the Furies--were spinning for
her; yet she wears her robes of sorrow with some of that grace of
patience which comes to her sex like an instinct born of centuried
servitude. How her husband ever fascinated so fascinatingly elusive a
creature is a mystery to all who know him and a miracle to all who
know her; but who has ever guessed the riddle of a woman's heart?
Surely no man yet known to the world, except possibly Balzac, and he
only occasionally by some sort of electric, psychological accident.
The true story of Mrs. Blaine's infelicities has been carefully hidden
from the public, although some superserviceable, would-be friends have
now and then busied themselves with starting absurd rumors, as if for
the fun of contradicting them; for instance, a precious yarn spun
lately to the effect that Mrs. Blaine, senior, looked down on her
daughter-in-law as not aristocratic enough to have married a Blaine.
How intrinsically absurd is such an idea in connection with a family
as close to what Lincoln called "the plain people"--and as really
proud of so being--as that of the famous Republican leader! Blaine is
a man so thoroughly democratic that only a very stupid enemy of his
could have invented such a piece of self-convicting nonsense; for if
aristocracy entered into the question, Mrs. James G. Blaine, Jr.,
could make a better showing than her spouse, since, if it confers any
_quasi_-patent of nobility in this country to have a distinguished
father, it must give a larger halo of social splendor to have a
distinguished grandfather, etc., etc. Now, Mrs. Blaine, Jr., had a
grandsire who was a power in his day, a forceful, brilliant man,
Samuel Medary, who was successively governor of three States, Ohio,
Kansas, and Minnesota. Mrs. Blaine, Jr., apart from her marital
misfortunes, deserves much sympathy for her physical fate. Just lately
her leg was broken again and her surgeons fear that her lameness must
be perpetual. Yet the talk about her going on the stage has some
basis, and no one who ever talked with her, and enjoyed the prismatic
play of her facial expression and the flexions of her vibrant voice,
could doubt her fitness for certain popular roles. Nor need her
lameness defeat her of success. A play of mingled pathos and humor
could be written for a lame heroine. One excellent writer has offered
to do it, and Hamlin Garland could do it excellently. Balzac in his
marvellous book, "The Alkahest," declares that she is blest among
women, who, having some great bodily defect, nevertheless wins a man's
affections, for she never loses her hold on them, and it might very
easily be the same with a lame actress and the affections of the
public.
As to Mrs. Blaine's case an immense interest is felt, an interest
which lies not alone in the points of law. Mrs. Blaine, Jr., is a
Catholic, and her example in taking this step contrary to the custom
of her church is likely to be fruitful. It is a pretty safe prophecy
that the next Pope will see the advisability of returning to the
policy of the church prevalent before the Council of Trent, and will
allow a wiser freedom to his spiritual subjects in this matter of
divorce. Hearts were created before creeds, and the primal laws of God
still possess, and exert in emergencies, their ancient vigor of
eminent domain.
It is noticeable that nearly all the women in the colony have
children, and nearly all are women of unusual grace or beauty, or
mental gift--sometimes all three in one.
A very interesting person occasionally seen on the streets with a
little golden-haired boy is Mrs. Mina Hubbard, formerly of Redbank, N.
J. She has one of those olive, oval faces so often met in the south of
Spain, and she has a voice whose beauty and volume are equally
impressive. One day in the cosy, dozy little Methodist Church last
summer she happened to join in the singing, and several pious nappers
were sweetly startled from their theologic dreams. After that event
there was such a marked increase in the masculine attendance that the
lady's modesty took fright, and she refrained from the pleasure of
church-going. When I asked her if she had lost her fondness for
Methodism and music, she replied archly: "Oh, no! I am extremely fond
of going to church and hearing good congregational music, _but_ I can
_restrain_ myself."
Hon. Thomas D. Worrall, M. D., who has recently obtained a divorce and
now lives in Sioux Falls, is another person of note. Born in England
sixty-five years ago, he came to America young, moved to Boston and
achieved reputation as an anti-slavery orator, even when the peerless
Phillips was in his first blaze. Then he went to Colorado, was a
member of the territorial legislature, and wrote his name largely and
honorably on her early annals. Horace Greeley, who liked him heartily,
persuaded him next to accept a professorship in New York in the
American College of Medicine. Two years later, going to New Orleans,
he became a member of the famous Warmouth Legislature, and as sanitary
physician to New Orleans, added to his world-wide host of friends.
While in England, in 1873, his lectures on the resources of the
Mississippi Valley attracted wide attention, and he was greeted on his
return by an ovation in the New Orleans Academy of Music. Colorado
again claimed him for seven happy, industrious years, marked by an
eloquent defence of the Denver Mining Exposition, for which they
presented him with a cabinet of minerals that, according to experts,
is intrinsically worth $5,000, though it would take vastly more to buy
it from a man so covetous of honor. Removing to Washington, he
published a curious little book called "Slander and Defamation of
Character."
Sickness came to this learned and benevolent man, and he went to
London for treatment, but famous surgeons, after operating, could give
him no hope, and he came back to his adopted country to die. To his
amazement he found his home broken up, his valuable furniture sold,
his wife gone. "The mystery of the case," he has said, "is that my
wife and I never had the least falling out. Her desertion of me in my
old age and supposed last illness was like lightning out of a clear
sky. The thought came to me, 'Dying man that I am, it will be sweet to
die free.'" He then came West and settled in Sioux Falls, and either
the invigorating climate, or the inspiration of freedom, or the shock
of his wife's desertion (for in some diseases a sudden shock delays or
defeats death by effecting an electric change in the bodily currents
setting restward) have worked a marvellous change, for to-day this
amiable and accomplished old man is the picture of health and vital
power.
There are many other cases of great interest in the Divorce Colony at
Sioux Falls, but this plain statement of a few is enough to show how
grossly the _personnel_ and character of the colony have been
slandered by certain sensational and corrupt newspaper correspondents.
For more than six months I have studied the conduct and natures of the
persons who compose the divorce colony, and every reputable citizen of
Sioux Falls will substantiate my statement that, with possibly three
exceptions, the divorce seekers have been remarkable for the inherent
justice of their suits and the dignity of their behavior during their
residence in this town. The attempt to give them and the place an
unenviable notoriety, made by certain newspapers, is a stain on
American journalism. Men and women suffer enough before they seek a
divorce court. It is ghoulish to pursue them in the press with
misrepresentation and ridicule, or with exposure of their marital
miseries. Divorce is not merely a legal right of the individual; it is
often a moral duty which ought to be demanded by society from a truly
dignified woman or man; for to cohabit where there is no love between
husband and wife, worse still where the atmosphere has become
surcharged with hate, and to foist on society children begotten and
reared in an atmosphere that may crush out every noble impulse and
lofty desire, besides the subtle discords of heredity that must mark
their temperaments, is not merely a most pathetic blunder for the
parties primarily affected, but a wrong to the race--a crime against
civilization.